Introduction:

Santander is pioneer in primary health care and is leading the implementation of the new comprehensive health care model (CHCM) in Colombia. This process requires to strength the competences of the health system’s workers.

Objective:

To identify the primary health care workers’ perception, and their supervisor’s perception, regarding their competences for working in the framework of the new CHCM.

Methods:

We conducted a cross-sectional online survey in health professionals and technicians, and their supervisors, working in primary health care centers. We built and validated a questionnaire for the assessment of the three competences dimensions (attitude, knowledge, skills) based on the CHCM conceptual documents and questionnaires of competences for physicians and nurses. We stratified results by health profession and then, the worker and supervisors’ perceptions were compared.

Results:

Participants were 359 health workers and 102 supervisors. In the attitude dimension, scores of leadership, teamwork, and professional autonomy were lower in supervisors than workers. In the knowledge dimension, the items with lower perception were those related to the new healthcare delivery’s routes, risk prioritization’s mechanisms, health services’ network, plans of benefits and health system’s structure. In the skills dimension, the competences with lower scores were the ones related to public health research and interdisciplinary work.

Conclusions:

We identify specific competencies that should be strengthened in primary healthcare workers, in order to achieve the expected performance in the new healthcare model in Colombia.